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Animal (Unit Class)
Wildlife is a serious thing. In the early game, the world is full of animals. They pose a threat to early exploration and colonization, but they are also a valuable resource, as they may be subdued, used as combat or recon units, or sometimes closed in cages for the benefit of the public. This last characteristic is important to gain some extra happiness or culture in your cities... and note that culture is difficult to obtain in FFH2. Subdued animals will have hidden nationality, and may be used to attack anyone without declaring war or explore rival territory. But beware: animal have normally low strength, and any wandering pc controlled unit will quickly dispose of them, also inside your cultural border if you have open border. So quickly declare nationality to pose them under protection of your flag. Animals will never enter the civilized lands or sea tiles. As the game advances, more aggressive threats will slowly substitute the animals: barbarian units and sometimes beasts will rampage the lands. Note that barbarian and animals will attack each other as two separate nations, and animals will quickly loose. Some animals will become rare to find, with the exception of those that continuously spam from liars or den. A mean to partially reverse the process in the late game is the Nature's Revolt ritual, that will turns all Barbarian units into Lions, Wolves and Tigers. Another mean is the Living World game option, to be set at start of game, or the Wilderness option included in some MODMOD like ExtraModMod, that augments the strength of barbarians and animals depending on the minimum distance to any player's starting point and on their technological advance. (see Wilderness page of the Civilopedia, in the Concepts section, inside ExtraModMod) The most rare animal is the Gorilla, that needs large jungle to appear, and that will never spawn with Nature's Revolt. Strategic importance of animals Animals are important in the early game: to use them to your advantage you will have to delay other important techs, retarding your beeline for Education or an early religion. Invisible animals Some Animals are invisible, and pose a serious treath to early to midgame scouts. Only units with flag "Can See Invisible Animals" are able to see them. In example, if you have cleared and "fog busted" a portion of territory, i.e. by placing some archers on strategic hills, you may think it safe to send a lonely settlers around, only to see it succumbing to a Giant Spider. You would have needed a Hunter or a flying Hawk to see the menace, or a pair of warriors to fend off the attack. Of course also units "Can See Invisible" may see invisible animals. Table of existing animals Gain control of animals and beasts You have to research Animal Husbandry to have access to Subdue Animal, that allow automatic conversion of defeated animals. You still have to win the combat, so it may be wise to weaken stronger animals scarifying some warriors. The +25% vs Animals promotion comes in help. Recon units The Recon line of units come with suitable promotions or ability to subue animals. All recon units need the Hunting Lodge buidling and comes with some ability: they Can see Invisible Animals, Can Carry 1 Hawk, and have +50% vs Animals. With promotion Subdue Animal (reserved to recon units with Combat I) they gain extra +25% vs Animals, and the ability to convert Defeated Animals. They also share some other characteristic: Better Results from Tribal Villages, Cannot Pillage, -20% City Attack. * Scout: 2/2, may learn Subdue Animal, does not require anything but lacks all the base abilities * Hunter: 4/2, may learn Subdue Animal, requires Hunting * Ranger: 7/2, automatically gain Subdue Animal, requires Animal Handling * Beastmaster: 14/2, maxed to 4 per player, requires Animal Mastery Some units will retain the recon ability if upgraded from recon, like Druid, Dwarven Druid, Myconid. If your religion is FoL, you will upgrade some fawn to Satyr, to gain access to the much more powerful Mesmerize Animal, that without combat automaticaly converts surrounding animal units. Your best recon, beastmasters or a ranger with the Hero promotion, may gain the subdue beast promotion and gain ability to extend their ability to the beasts, that in the game are like super-animals. For more informations see Beast (Unit Class), Subdue Beasts, and the valued beast prize Acheron the Red Dragon. Advanced Strategy: wild animal farming Wolf spamming Tundra and ice tile are not easly civilized, and in some maps large expances of frozen land may remain in middle and lategame. If you avoid signing open borders with anyone, you may protect a frozen territory, that will continue spawn wolves at a discreet rate. Wolfpacks are effective mobile wolf dens. You may get some some wolfpacks and park them some wood, let them declare nationality (so open border scouts from others do not kill them) and let them spawn new wolf. The new wolves will go to every newly found city, where you will build at once the cheap festival building, that will turns from +1 happy +20% culture into +2 happy, + 3 culture, + 20% culture. It is a very cost effective strategy for non-creative leaders, and the AI does not use this, so is handicapped in culture war. With no open borders you may include existing wolf dens and bear liars in your territory. When they fall inside cultural borders all spawned animals will remain in place. Then you may send a ranger to "farm" existing animals, paying attenction to leave one alive animal on the den to defend it, and your newfound cities had +2/+3 culture. Bear are the most precious in culture wars, because they do not need the Festival Buildings, thay may accompany the settler to found instant +3 culture cities for free. Army of spiders In the early game giant spiders are quite powerful units: invisible, 4 strenght, and easy reproducing. If you gain control of a giant spider in the early game you may promote it winning some barbarians, gaining additional baby spiders in the process, attack some neighbors, and if the map is Pangea you may steamroll all your opponents quickly, with an avalanche mechanic similar to werewolves strategy. To gain a spider in the early game a good dose of luck is needed. Keep some scouts ready with a free pomotion slot, research animal handling, promote the scout with subdue animal, and hope a giant spider attacks you. If you wait for huners and hawks you will increase your chances, but effectiveness of the spiders will decrease greatly as the computer will have hunters too, to counter them. To manage cost as you conquer cities the civic city states is needed, and you will have to disband excess troops of spiders. Puppet states would be useful if some MODMOD is used. Modding The code that decide the barbarian spawn rate is in CvGame::createBarbarianUnits(), but you can fully mod the spawning in XML via the tags and . If you want to disable a Unit from Spawning, just set the AppeareanceProb to -1000. There are examples like Lion Pride in Assets\Modules\Normalmodules\Animals\animal_Civ4unitinfos.xml. List of animals * Baby Spider * Bear * Blooded Werewolf * Elephant * Giant Spider * Giant Tortoise * Gorilla * Greater Werewolf * Griffon * Lion * Lion Pride * Polar Bear * Ravenous Werewolf * Sand Lion * Sea Serpent * Tiger * War Tortoise * Wolf * Wolf Pack